Open 3.0 was originally codenamed
"Roadrunner" and is a new server motherboard approach that conforms to
standards being developed by the Open Compute Project.Suresh Gopalakrishnan explained
during a keynote session at the Open Compute Summit this week that Open
3.0 is a single modular platform that can be tuned for multiple-use
cases, whether its cloud, storage or high-performance computing.
Gopalakrishnan defined Open 3.0 as the physical implementation of Open
Compute.According to Gopalakrishnan, the platform provides open management and no vendor lock-in.The initial Open 3.0 motherboard
is powered by a pair of AMD Opteron 6300 Series processors. The board
supports up to 24 DIMM memory slots and 6 SATA connections. In terms of
dimensions, the Open 3.0 motherboard measures 16" x 16.7" and will fit
into 1U, 1.5U, 2U or 3U server chassis. "What's really exciting for me
here is the way the Open Compute Project inspired AMD and specific
consumers to collaboratively bring our 'vanity-free' design philosophy
to a motherboard that suited their exact needs," Frank Frankovsky,
chairman of the Open Compute Foundation and VP of Hardware Design and
Supply Chain at Facebook, said in a statement.AMD is working with a number of
partners, including Quanta Computer, Tyan and Penguin Computing, and
expects availability of Open 3.0 servers by the end of the first quarter
of 2013.AMD's Open 3.0 news followed some other big news from the Open Compute Summit, namely the new Common Slot specification. With the common slot architecture, the idea is to enable multiple types of CPUs to co-exist within a server. "We are an active participant in
that (Common Slot) and you will see different types of open hardware
that we will help to drive to the market," Gopalakrishnan said. "We're
very interested in how dense computing is coming together, and common
slot is one approach to do that."